Research Methods For Child Life Specialists

In today’s evidence-based healthcare culture, child life specialists must demonstrate knowledge and skill not only in clinical care, but also in planning and evaluating the impact of their interventions—yet few resources exist to provide research skills and support for these practitioners. To adequately evaluate, improve, and innovate patient and family outcomes, it is essential that all providers understand the key inquiry pathways of research. Combining clinical examples and skills with candid advice from seasoned child life specialist researchers, this text scaffolds the concept of inquiry into feasible units of action. From identifying a clinical question to assembling a team, designing a project, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting on results, it guides students, professionals, and administrators in actively exploring and improving healthcare outcomes for patients and their families. Case examples from the authors’ own experiences as clinicians and researchers serve to demonstrate how to seamlessly translate clinical skills into those needed for success in research, ensuring that child life specialists remain active contributors to today’s research evidence on the needs of children and families during healthcare encounters.

Child life is a profession that draws on the insights of history, sociology, anthropology and psychology to serve children and families in many critical stress points in their lives, but especially when they are ill, injured or disabled and encounter the hosts of caregivers and institutions that collaborate to make them well. Children and their families can become overwhelmed by the task of understanding and navigating the healthcare environment and continue to face challenges through their daily encounters. It is the job of child life professionals to provide care and guidance in these negotiations to serve as culture brokers, interpreters of the healthcare apparatus to family and child and the child to medical professionals. Despite the best efforts to provide quality, sensitive psychosocial care to children and their families, they remain vulnerable to lingering aftereffects. The goal of this revised edition is to help prepare child life specialists to deliver the highest level of care to children and families in the context of these changing realities. Each chapter has been substantially revised and two new chapters have been added. This book will be a valuable resource for not only child life specialists but also nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, social workers and other hospital personnel.

"Child Life Specialist - The Comprehensive Guide" is an indispensable resource for aspiring and seasoned professionals dedicated to enhancing the healthcare experience for children and their families. This book delves into the heart of pediatric healthcare, providing a roadmap for delivering compassionate care that addresses the emotional, social, and developmental needs of young patients. Through a blend of theory and practice, readers will discover innovative strategies, effective communication techniques, and the profound impact of empathy in fostering resilience and healing. With an emphasis on real-world applications, this guide equips readers with the tools necessary to navigate the complexities of pediatric healthcare, making every child’s hospital experience as positive and enriching as possible. Without relying on images or illustrations to convey its message, this book focuses on the power of narrative and expertise to illuminate the role of child life specialists. Readers will find themselves immersed in a collection of insights, experiences, and evidence-based practices that highlight the significance of tailored, child-centric care. By emphasizing the unique blend of skills and compassion required to support children through medical challenges, "Child Life Specialist - The Comprehensive Guide" serves as a beacon for anyone looking to make a difference in the lives of young patients. Whether you’re a student, a new practitioner, or a seasoned professional seeking to deepen your expertise, this book offers a treasure trove of knowledge and inspiration, ensuring it's a must-have addition to your professional library.

While the genesis of the Certified Child Life Specialists (CCLS) is in the healthcare setting, the theory and practice of child life has been successfully applied to environments outside of the healthcare field. The interest and pursuit of child life roles in non-healthcare settings have increasingly become of interest to students and professionals; however, further study is required to understand the various challenges and opportunities. The Role of Child Life Specialists in Community Settings serves as an innovative guide for those interested in pursuing child life in diverse settings with the education and credentials received through their child life certification and addresses issues the field currently faces related to saturation of the field, burn out, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The book also serves as a catalyst to push the profession as a whole beyond its current healthcare boundaries. Covering topics such as grief, addiction, disaster relief, and family wellbeing, this major reference work is ideal for psychologists, medical professionals, nurses, policymakers, government officials, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

In recent decades, advances in biomedical research have helped save or lengthen the lives of children around the world. With improved therapies, child and adolescent mortality rates have decreased significantly in the last half century. Despite these advances, pediatricians and others argue that children have not shared equally with adults in biomedical advances. Even though we want children to benefit from the dramatic and accelerating rate of progress in medical care that has been fueled by scientific research, we do not want to place children at risk of being harmed by participating in clinical studies. Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children considers the necessities and challenges of this type of research and reviews the ethical and legal standards for conducting it. It also considers problems with the interpretation and application of these standards and conduct, concluding that while children should not be excluded from potentially beneficial clinical studies, some research that is ethically permissible for adults is not acceptable for children, who usually do not have the legal capacity or maturity to make informed decisions about research participation. The book looks at the need for appropriate pediatric expertise at all stages of the design, review, and conduct of a research project to effectively implement policies to protect children. It argues persuasively that a robust system for protecting human research participants in general is a necessary foundation for protecting child research participants in particular.

The Handbook of Medical Play Therapy and Child Life brings together the voices and clinical experiences of dedicated clinical practitioners in the fields of play therapy and child life. This volume offers fresh insights and up to date research in the use of play with children, adolescents, and families in medical and healthcare settings. Chapters take a strength-based approach to clinical interventions across a wide range of health-related issues, including autism, trauma, routine medical care, pending surgeries both large and small, injury, immune deficiency, and more. Through its focus on the resiliency of the child, the power of play, and creative approaches to healing, this handbook makes visible the growing overlap and collaboration between the disciplines of play therapy and child life.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

`Strongly recommended as it provides a very useful overview of a range of methods, mainly textual, for exploring children′s experiences. These accounts are placed well in the broader conceptual frameworks concerning both methodologies and ethical considerations′ - Educational Review How should the researcher approach the sensitive subject of the child? What are the ethical issues involved in researching children′s experiences? In essays written by a collection of key, international authors, Researching Children′s Experience addresses these questions, and examines up-to-date methodological and conceptual approaches to researching children. This book is a practical, comprehensive and interdisciplinary guide for advanced students and researchers, exploring a range of studies, and the theoretical and ethical motivations behind them. The book is divided into three coherent sections: - Conceptual, methodological and ethical issues in researching children′s experiences. - Methods for conducting research with children. - The generation and analysis of text. Researching Children′s Experience provides examples of how researchers from a variety of social science perspectives have set about carrying out research into children′s experience. Useful to students embarking on a research project, and to experienced researchers wishing to explore new methods, Greene and Hogan′s book is an essential addition to anyone doing research on children. It will be especially useful to those in developmental psychology, education, nursing and other disciplines interested in studying children′s experience.

The burgeoning multidisciplinary field of social and emotional learning (SEL) now has a comprehensive and definitive handbook covering all aspects of research, practice, and policy. The prominent editors and contributors describe state-of-the-art intervention and prevention programs designed to build students' skills for managing emotions, showing concern for others, making responsible decisions, and forming positive relationships. Conceptual and scientific underpinnings of SEL are explored and its relationship to children's and adolescents' academic success and mental health examined. Issues in implementing and assessing SEL programs in diverse educational settings are analyzed in depth, including the roles of school- and district-level leadership, teacher training, and school-family partnerships.